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Too much ink has already been used and too many keyboards have been broken to point out, or cry out, if you like, the differences between translation and interpreting… Basically, very plainly explained, it goes down to the fact that translators usually do their work in front of the computer having a source text, whereas interpreters work live, under the pressure of real-time performance, in meetings, conferences and usually public setups. The work of translators results in a target text, whereas the work of interpreters is a speech in the target language that mainly contributes to the success or failure of events.

It is widely known that humour, like poetry, is quite difficult to convey in another language, and therefore puts a strain on translators. But what happens when humour is about translators? Although we usually strive to remain unnoticed in our work, we are highly resourceful when it comes to fun, and making fun of ourselves can be very healthy, stimulating and, as you will see below, revealing. To get to know our trade better, and to welcome spring in a cheerful mood, here is a collection of the best jokes and amusing quotes starring translators and interpreters:

Tourism is one of the industries most needing translation, due to the diversity of the people, languages and cultures in contact with each other, and also the ever-increasing demands for localization of contents in multiple languages. Essentially, translation forms part of the effort to prepare each country for foreign tourists, who do not necessarily speak the local language, so these tourists can discover that country’s culture and what it has to offer visitors. This need to translate content related to travel, culture and tourism cuts across various formats - websites, catalogues, brochures, menus, flyers or signage, in the various business areas in which the tourist industry moves.

December 18 was the United Nations Arabic Language Day, the perfect opportunity to learn more about this language.

Arabic Language Day was established in 2010 by UNESCO to promote cultural understanding and to highlight Arabic as one of the most important languages in the world. Today, there are three different types of Arabic: Classical; Modern Standard, which is used in publishing, education, and the media across the Arab world; and Colloquial Arabic, an everyday dialect, used in different regions and having numerous variations. Due to its elegant, flowing lines, thousands of people all over the world have also chosen to get tattoos in Arabic, including singer Christina Perri and actors Colin Farrell and Zoe Saldana, to name but a few.

Have you ever wondered why we love riddles so much? Is it the double or veiled meaning they put forth, our penchant for puzzle solving, the intriguing opposition between two or more descriptive elements the referent of which must be identified, or simply the unexpected or witty answers? Whatever the reason, it explains why riddles are encountered in all cultures and recorded as early as Babylonian times. What they achieve is making ”a point of playing with conceptual boundaries and crossing them for the intellectual pleasure of showing that things are not quite as stable as they seem”. Although such head scratching may be exasperating, it does open our minds to a variety of possibilities. Both a folklore genre and a rhetorical device, these brain teasers charm us even when we have heard them before, and either challenge us to think or just make us laugh.

Language endangerment is a serious concern to which linguists and language planners have turned their attention in the last several decades. For a variety of reasons, speakers of many smaller, less dominant languages stop using their heritage language and begin using another. In time, a language may become dormant or extinct, existing perhaps only in recordings or written records and transcriptions. Languages which have not been adequately documented disappear altogether.

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With the countless advances in technology, social media, and business practices, it can be hard to keep track of all of the new terms and concepts that are born every day. Translation has been around for a while now, and localization seems to have caught on pretty well, but transcreation is something that not a lot of people know about.

With more than 250 million speakers on this planet (and in space), Russian is the sixth most spoken language worldwide, the most spoken in Europe, and the second most used language on the Internet. Learning it may be very useful for communication not only in the Russian Federation (with a population of more than 140 million), but also in the former soviet spheres of influence in Europe and Asia, from Tallinn to Belgrade and from Warsaw to Astana. Learning Russian gives access to a fabulous literature, a very active scientific community, and an emerging economy expanding its presence on the international stage.

By some estimates, the English language has more than one million words. Although impossible to establish an exact figure, it is generally agreed that there is no other language with so many words. And it’s not like any of us use all one million words, but this fact gives you reasons to believe that English must have a word for absolutely everything. No. Not even close.

Translation is usually defined as the act of transmitting the language of the source text into the language of the target text, taking into consideration cultural and linguistic differences. It gained a significant role starting from the 1940’s, especially during the Second World War. Back then, translators were highly needed to translate spying documents mainly between the U.S.A. and their most feared enemy at that time, the Soviet Union. Even after this era of conflict, the importance of translation increased in that it was needed in the field of economy. The first proposals for machine translation (MT) using computers were put forward by Warren Weaver, a researcher at the Rockefeller Foundation, in his July, 1949 memorandum. These proposals were based on information theory, successes of code breaking during the Second World War and speculation about universal underlying principles of natural language.